McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Why Do You Write?

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Velkyn_Faer:
This is fairly simple, though the answers might not be. What drives you to write? This can be anything, from fanfiction to fantasy to sci-fi to romance. What makes you sit down at the keyboard or with that pen and paper and begin to form that world?

For myself, I just like the feeling of breathing to life a new world and people to inhabit that world. I have called it 'playing God' before, and I feel that term is a fairly good description. When you write, you can change history, the future, or the present. You can create a whole new living, breathing world with thousands of characters that are indeed out there, even if you do not write about them specifically.

Also, there's just something cool about the world you create, and the characters. You know them better than anyone else in the world, know every aspect of their lives. It's just a cool feeling.

So tell me, why do you write?

Velkyn

Kali:
I set up people I like or find interesting or intriguing, give them a situation that's screwed up, and then try to completely immerse myself in those people.  I love that, when I really fall into the story and I have no knowledge of time passing or what's going on around me.  I love it when I stop because I have to pee RIGHT NOW and I realize it's six hours since I sat down at the computer.  I love it when I read back over stuff I've written and have literally no memory of having written certain phrases so that, in reading, I go, "Woah... Good one."

I love when I can scare myself, or thrill myself, or make myself cry.  I love crafting the scene just so to dredge up a particular emotion, or manipulating a setting to create just the right atmosphere.  I get downright giddy when a friend reads something I've written and says, without me prompting them, that I gave them chills where I wanted the reader to get chills or made them lose track of the world when they read just like I do when I write.

I couldn't NOT write.  I'm an addict.

Josh:
I write because if I didn't let the words out, they'd scratch up the furniture and piss on the carpets.

Seriously. I'd go crazy. Writing is the one form of work that I truly enjoy, even when it's painful and stressing me out. It's the one thing I can see myself doing for the rest of my life, and I pray to God that is what I'll end up being able to do. I write because writing makes me want to continually expand...expand the places I've travelled to throughout the world, expand what I know about science or mythology, expand the people I know, the foods I've eaten. If I don't, I'm going to be one dull wit sooner or later, because life itself is what becomes the answer to that ubiquitous question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

There's a lot of unadulterated joy in writing...as I'm sure many people with that creative drive have experienced. Am I always happy with my writing? Hah. Plenty of days I look back on a mudslide of words and wonder if there were any bodies buried that I should take the time to dig up. But no matter how much market research or rewriting or critique groups or writing conferences...I always come back to the blank page, and some words pawing at the door to be let out.

www.jrvogt.com

BobSkull:
Because I love to do it, because it is an escape, and because it's going to be my profession.

Abstruse:
I write because I have to.

The Abstruse One
Darryl Mott Jr.

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